


Storm Season

by radiofreekerberos



Series: Ocean of Storms [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galra Keith (Voltron), Hybrid Keith Voltron, M/M, Merman Keith Voltron, Protective Keith (Voltron), Protective Shiro (Voltron), Sad Shiro (Voltron), Sheith merman AU, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sickfic, Whump Fic, hybrid keith, mer!Keith, mermaid au, merman Keith, merman au, merman/hybrid/galra/keith
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2018-12-26 09:50:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12056454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiofreekerberos/pseuds/radiofreekerberos
Summary: Stranded on a deserted island, Shiro hopes for rescue while his relationship with hybrid-merman in hiding Keith takes a romantic turn. Part Four in the Ocean of Storms series.He’s counted thirty-three days since he was first stranded here. Thirty-three sunrises and thirty-three sunsets, since he woke up on a sandy white beach with a pair of curious violet eyes staring at him. He smiles briefly at the thought, his eyes shifting to the sandy shore spreading out like a blanket from the edge of the tree-line to where Keith is leisurely strolling its length.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more merman fic, just because

Mechanical fingers aren't made for basket weaving, or hat weaving, whatever. Shiro sighs, flexing his cramped flesh and blood fingers before stripping another palm frond from the pile of leaves at his feet. He’s attempting to weave a hat to protect his peeling face from further sun damage, but his artificial fingers are a bit too insensitive for such refined work. He keeps inadvertently shredding the stalks. He exhales in frustration and blinks up at the overcast sky. Not that it really matters anyway. The sun hasn’t made an appearance in days. A light rain has been pelting the canopy of palm trees over their heads for the better part of a week now. He briefly wonders how far south the island is, and whether it might be headed into some sort of monsoon season.

He’s counted thirty-three days since he was first stranded here. Thirty-three sunrises and thirty-three sunsets, since he woke up on a sandy white beach with a pair of curious violet eyes staring at him. He smiles briefly at the thought, his eyes shifting to the sandy shore spreading out like a blanket from the edge of the tree-line to where Keith is leisurely strolling its length.

He’s still wearing Shiro’s shirt, though the fabric is beginning to fray from constant exposure to the elements and frequent dunks in the ocean. There’s a red beach pail swinging from his hand, a child’s forgotten toy washed out to sea from some public beach that eventually ended up here, Shiro guesses. Every few feet or so Keith squats down in the rapidly retreating water and plunges his hand into the wet sand, drawing out a tightly shut clam and depositing it into the pail. Shiro watches him work for a few minutes, admiring the fluid grace of his movements and the enticing way the salty wind catches his long dark hair, momentarily revealing his delicate features and small shell-like ears. 

Not surprisingly, he seems completely indifferent to the raw wet weather. Shiro is getting pretty sick of walking around in perpetually soggy jeans, but so far Keith remains blissfully unconcerned by sun, rain, wind, heat or cold, though Shiro supposes he could just be really good at hiding his discomfort. He’s also been here a lot longer than Shiro, so maybe he’s learned to tune out such trivial matters. The image of a small stranded child alone and shivering on the beach suddenly pops into Shiro’s head and his mouth twists into a guilty frown as he scratches the stubbly beard covering his face. He has no right to complain, but man, he’d kill for a hot shower right about now.

Keith notices his attention and Shiro smiles as he hurries over, the plastic pail in his hand brimming with briny clamshells. “Shiro, dinner,” he says with a grin, setting it down in the sand at Shiro’s bare feet. He’s picked up an impressive amount of language over the last month, though he still stumbles a bit over words that don’t come up often in everyday conversation.

Shiro’s smile falters a bit as he eyes the overflowing pail. “Great,” he says with as much faux enthusiasm as he can muster. 

Shiro’s relationship with fish has warmed marginally over the past month, though not enough for him to say that he actually enjoys eating it. Still, he’s not stupid enough to starve himself, or ungrateful enough to turn down anything Keith provides for him. Keith’s familiarized Shiro with the island’s other food sources as well, wild mangos, red bananas and starchy root vegetables that appear to be some variety of sweet potato. The plants from those are also edible, if a little bitter, so at least they won’t starve, and Shiro is grateful to Keith for any variety in his diet.

He sets his partially constructed hat aside and removes the big green palm leaves protecting the fire pit from the rain. He tries to keep the embers burning throughout the day so he doesn’t have to expend the energy to re-ignite it too often. Keith snatches a clam off the top of the pail and Shiro chuckles as he empties the rest into the pit, spreading them out over a layer of fruit leaves near the flames. Then he covers the pit back up and sits back on his heels, scratching the back of his head where his undercut is rapidly growing out.

Keith grins and brushes a bit of sand from the clamshell in his hand. “If you’re determined to eat that raw,” Shiro says, which of course, he is since Keith is literally always hungry. Shiro finds it endearing actually. “I’m pretty sure you’re gonna need a knife to open it,” which they don’t have.

Keith just looks at him. He wraps his fingers around the top half of the clamshell and simply tears it off with his bare hand like it’s the lid off a mayonnaise jar. Shiro blinks. He’s pretty sure his expression resembles a Deadpool gif right now, but really he shouldn't be surprised. If there’s one thing he’s learned since ending up here it’s that Keith is way stronger than he should be. He’s at least as strong as Shiro, but Shiro is twice his size and really has to work at it. 

“Okay, then,” he says, watching Keith suck the raw clam from its shell and happily start munching on it. Shiro wrinkles his nose and tries not to shudder. “Boy, my mom’s gonna love you,” he says. He shifts one of the palm leaves to check on the clams. They haven’t opened yet, so he replaces it. “You’ll be the sushi loving son she never had.”

“Sushi,” Keith says thoughtfully, swallowing the last bits of the impromptu appetizer.

“It’s a Japanese dish made with fish, seaweed and rice,” Shiro says.

Keith just looks at him like he’s got two heads. Shiro’s pretty sure it’s the rice that’s the sticking point. “Trust me,” he says, “you’re gonna love it.”

“And this is what you eat in San-Cran-Crisco?” Keith asks.

“San Francisco,” Shiro says with a dry chuckle, “and yeah, sometimes. I mean, not me personally, but plenty of other people. I’ll take you out for spicy tuna roll when we get home.” 

_And there’s that look again,_ Shiro thinks, the same troubled look Keith gets whenever Shiro mentions going home. Until now he hasn’t pressed the matter because he’d thought it was just fear of the unknown preying on Keith’s mind. Now he’s starting to think there may be more to it than that.

He checks the clams. The shells have opened and coils of steam are rising from them. Shiro plucks them out of the pit with his artificial hand and lays them out on a relatively sand free bed of banana leaves. He’s gotten much better at this cooking thing, or anyway Keith doesn’t make nearly as many faces as he used to.

“Don’t you _want_ to go home?” Shiro asks him, after the majority of their meal passes in awkward silence.

“ _This_ is my home,” Keith mumbles into the clamshell in his hand.

“I understand that this may be the only home you remember,” Shiro says softly, “but it isn’t where you were born. You came from somewhere else originally. Try to think back.”

Keith tosses an empty clamshell into the rapidly receding tide and draws his knees up to his chest. He looks suddenly smaller and almost… ashamed. “I don’t want to talk anymore,” he says. He abruptly stands and slips away into the trees. Shiro frowns after him. He can guess where he’s going.

Turns out there’s a freshwater cove that opens into a flooded cavern beneath the limestone cave where they sleep. It’s where their drinking water comes from. The water is filtered through the fissures in the limestone and forms a small waterfall that flows back into the lake, keeping it from stagnating. Keith is extremely good at navigating the water filled cavern through the back entrance into the cave, though it’s cramped and pitch black and Shiro is constantly afraid that he’s going to get himself trapped in there. 

Shiro disposes of the rest of the empty clamshells then follows the path Keith took into the trees. He finds Keith waiting for him by the edge of the lake. He’s stretched out on his stomach on a rain slick shelf of rock, one hand dangling in the water. _Teasing the crayfish again,_ Shiro thinks as he joins him by the water’s edge. For some reason this place always reminds him of the Mermaid Cove from Peter Pan. His mouth quirks slightly at the thought.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says finally, though Keith has yet to acknowledge his presence.

“You didn’t,” Keith says, one hand fisted beneath his chin. His eyes are glued to the water in front of him.

“Kinda think you’re lying to me right now,” Shiro says mildly, watching Keith from the corner of his eye.

Keith sighs theatrically and sits up with his bare legs crossed in front of him. “I wish I could help you leave this place. I know you want to.”

“I do,” Shiro says with a nod, “not without you though.”

Keith finally looks at him, his brow anxiously creased. “Even if that’s what I want?” he asks.

“Keith…”

“There’s nothing for me out there Shiro,” Keith says flatly.

“Even if that were true,” Shiro says, “even if you think you have nowhere to go, you will always have a home with me.”

“Because you feel pity for me,” Keith mutters.

“Because I care about you,” Shiro insists. Keith only scowls at him. He’s afraid, Shiro can see it in his eyes. There’s something Keith desperately wants to tell him. Whatever he’s been holding back since Shiro arrived here. For a moment Shiro thinks he’s going to tell him, but then the opportunity passes. Keith’s expression shifts and Shiro knows that whatever it is, he’s simply not ready to talk about it yet. 

“What’s it like?” he asks instead, self-consciously averting his gaze as he brushes the wet hair from his eyes.

“What? San Francisco?” Shiro asks. 

Keith nods without looking at him.

“I suppose I could try to describe the Presidio, or Fisherman’s Wharf, or the Golden Gate Bridge to you, but the words wouldn’t have any real meaning for you,” Shiro says. “It’s just something you’ll have to experience for yourself.” A fleeting smile crosses his lips as he places his hand on Keith’s. “I _can_ tell you it’s beautiful though.”

“It’s beautiful here,” Keith murmurs.

“It is,” Shiro agrees, “but home is more than just a nice landscape. It’s comforting and familiar, and knowing there isn’t an entire ocean separating you from the people you love.” A bolt of lightning splits the gray sky like a jagged crack of white light, followed a few moments later by a rolling crash of thunder that startles them both. “We should probably get inside,” Shiro says eyeing the darkening horizon. It looks like their week of unsettled weather is finally culminating in a full-on storm. 

Keith slips into the water and turns expectantly, waiting for Shiro to join him.

“Not a good idea,” Shiro insists tensely. “Water conducts electricity.”

“Elec…?”

Shiro pulls a face. “Forget it, it’d take too long to explain. We should go around.”

“This way’s faster,” Keith says, as another flash of lightning fractures the sky.

“It’s also pitch black.”

“It’s still light out,” Keith says.

“Not for much longer,” Shiro says, eyeing the line of black storm clouds quickly blotting out the sky.

“You can light up your arm,” Keith tells him.

“My arm gives off heat remember? It’ll make the water boil.”

“I can light up my arm.”

“Very funny,” Shiro says flatly.

Keith scowls when a rumble of thunder splits the air. “We could’ve been inside already,” he says and Shiro sighs in resignation, because there’s no talking Keith out of anything once his mind is made up. All Shiro can do is go along and make sure he doesn’t… die alone, or whatever.

Keith rises up out of the water and pulls Shiro in by his flesh and blood hand. Shiro barely has time to suck in a breath before they’re diving beneath the chilled surface and Keith is slicing through the water like a shark, still holding Shiro’s hand. 

He’s an incredibly powerful swimmer, something which Shiro has come to admire watching him rise from the sea each evening with an armful of fish or shellfish for their dinner. Creatures that by all rights should be too fast and too deep for a lone swimmer to catch barehanded, except no one ever told Keith that.

They swim past the churning waterfall, or rather Keith swims, Shiro just makes himself as compact as possible so as not to be too much of a drag on Keith’s progress. The entire lake lights up for a moment like the negative image from an old photograph, and Shiro closes his eyes, counting his thundering heartbeats in the claustrophobic space. 

Keith pulls him up through the flooded cavern, rough shelves of limestone jut out into the narrow passage, making it feel even more confined. Shiro struggles to keep his breath, gripping Keith’s hand more tightly as they glide upwards together and finally break the surface of the pool at the back of the cave.

Shiro scrambles out of it as soon as they hit the air, his breath coming in short ragged gasps as he grabs Keith’s hand and hauls him out behind him. Then he retreats to the front of the cave, pressing his artificial hand against the cold cliff face as he leans out over the crevice and sucks in great gulps of damp air into his paralyzed lungs. 

He never used to be claustrophobic, but since becoming the sole survivor of a plane crash he can no longer abide confined spaces. He dreams he’s still trapped inside the flooded cabin sometimes, unable to breathe, surrounded by bloated corpses still strapped into their seats. He wakes up bathed in sweat and feeling as if the walls are closing in on him. He spends the rest of the night on the rocky shelf outside the crevice staring at the raging sea throwing itself against the jagged shoals below. In the morning, he opens his eyes to find Keith propped up against him, one lean arm wrapped tightly around him to make sure he doesn’t fall.

A cold hand tentatively touches his shoulder. “You’re getting worse,” Keith says, his voice tinged with worry.

“I’ll be fine,” Shiro gasps, trying to overcome the growing feeling of panic constricting his chest.

Keith frowns. He grips Shiro by the shoulders and makes him sit down on the moss slick ground next to the crevice. Good thing too, Shiro’s legs have turned to jelly. “Breathe Shiro,” Keith tells him softly. He sits down next to him, his lean body cold and solid against Shiro’s shoulder. “Just breathe,” he says, “easiest thing in the world, breathing.”

“Easy for you to say,” Shiro gasps, “you weren’t almost killed by a stubborn, insanely reckless sea-urchin.” The pun goes right over Keith’s head of course. He matches his breathing with Shiro’s, gradually slowing his breaths by increments until Shiro’s chest unknots and his lungs start working again. Shiro sighs, his panic gradually receding.

“The passage isn’t even all that narrow you know,” Keith says softly, rubbing Shiro’s flesh and blood arm, “you just _think_ it is.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Shiro heatedly asks. “I’m fully aware that my fears are irrational thank you very much. It’s not like it makes them any less real.”

“I’m sorry,” Keith says sheepishly, and Shiro immediately regrets his tone. “From now on we’ll take the long way around… like frail old men,” Keith says, breaking into a quicksilver grin.

Shiro cracks up. “Fuck you,” he chuckles, fondly tousling Keith’s shaggy hair. Then he wraps his arm around Keith’s shoulder and plants a soft kiss on top of his soggy head almost before he even realizes what he’s doing. It’s a reflex. Keith is just so close, laughing and beautiful in the fading light. His pale skin is practically luminescent, and Shiro can’t help himself. He freezes and Keith goes completely still in his grasp. Keith looks up, his unearthly violet eyes inches from Shiro’s flushed face. Shiro swallows and Keith’s eyes shift to his lips. 

A huge crack of thunder fractures the air and they both flinch in sudden surprise, breaking away from each other. Shiro lets out a rueful chuckle as his gaze shifts to the view outside the crevice. The storm has started raging in earnest now. Lightning splits the sky, momentarily illuminating the pouring rain, coming down in horizontal sheets carried on the howling wind. Huge black waves batter the shore like giant hands ripping away at the sandy beach. It’s going to be a good day for salvage tomorrow, plenty of driftwood to fuel the fire. Thunder crashes, and Keith startles again. Shiro turns his head to find Keith’s face inches from his.

“It’s just thunder,” Shiro tells him. “It can’t hurt you,” which seems like a strange thing to say for someone who not ten minutes earlier had been in the throes of a full-on panic attack. Keith frowns slightly, and Shiro knows he’s thinking the exact same thing. “I _could_ tell you it’s just the sound that results from the rapid air expansion surrounding a bolt of lightning, but that would take all the romance out of it.”

“Romance?” Keith asks, moving closer. His eyes are once again focused on Shiro’s lips.

Shiro swallows nervously. “In this case it means mystery and wonder,” he babbles, “actually that’s a pretty good definition of romance in gen-” then Keith kisses him, soft and long and deep. Shiro doesn’t even mind the clam breath. 

Keith disengages from him, a silent question evident in his eyes. Shiro responds by taking Keith’s face in both his hands and kissing him again, his mouth opening to meet Keith’s questing tongue. Keith climbs into his lap, wrapping his long legs around Shiro’s waist and Shiro slides his arms up Keith’s back and urgently pulls him to his bare chest. Naked from the waist down beneath Shiro’s shirt, Keith’s hardness is pressed up against him. It immediately makes Shiro hard as well.

“Wait, wait,” he gasps, momentarily disengaging from Keith’s hungry lips. His breath is coming in short excited gasps. “Are you sure about this?”

Keith nods, his breathing just as rapid. “Yes,” he says. “Are you?”

“Yup, uh-huh,” Shiro gasps immediately, and Keith laughs and helps Shiro disentangle himself from his clammy jeans as their lips meet again in the lightning punctuated darkness…

***

Afterwards, Shiro lays on the soft moss covered rock with his artificial hand folded beneath his head and Keith laying on his chest. He traces lazy circles over Keith’s bare back with his flesh and blood hand and listens to the storm blowing itself out outside. “Was that the first time you ever did that?” Shiro idly asks.

“Yes,” Keith murmurs. He lifts his head, his chin resting on his hands folded over Shiro’s chest. “Did I do it right?”

Shiro chuckles. “Oh, yeah,” he says. It was amazing. Keith was amazing. Shiro’s never felt like this before, not with anyone. It’s as if every atom in his body is vibrating with warmth and light and contentment. As if he’s been waiting his entire life for the moment when he first discovered that he and Keith fit together like it was what they were made for. “Did I… I didn't hurt you did I?” Shiro asks, suddenly worried. He just assumed it was Keith’s first time and was trying to be as gentle as possible.

“No,” Keith assures him. “You were kind to me.” He sounds suddenly sad and Shiro lifts his head slightly to get a better look at him in the darkness.

“Having regrets?” Shiro asks.

“About this? No,” Keith says firmly. He lays his head down on Shiro’s chest, his sea scented hair soft and damp on Shiro’s bare skin. “I just wish we could stay like this forever,” he murmurs somberly.

“Well, it’s not like I’m going anywhere,” Shiro says softly, running his flesh and blood fingers through Keith’s briny hair, “not for the foreseeable future anyway.”

Keith murmurs noncommittally and Shiro thoughtfully purses his lips. “Keith, why do you think there’s nothing out there for you?” he asks softly.

Keith goes completely still against him. “Because it’s true,” he murmurs finally.

Shiro frowns slightly at that. He hates the idea of Keith thinking he’s all alone in the world. “You know,” he says quietly, “whatever it is you think you can’t tell me, I want you to know that you can. You can trust me Keith.” Keith lifts his head, his violet eyes glassy in the darkness. “You never know,” Shiro says, smiling as he gently brushes the hair from Keith’s eyes, “I might even be able to help.”

Keith’s brow knits as he averts his gaze, as if whatever he has to say will go easier if he doesn’t have to look Shiro in the eye. “Your mother will be happy to see you,” he says flatly.

It takes Shiro a moment to realize it’s supposed to be a question. “Yes,” he says finally.

Keith swallows, his hooded eyes hidden by the dark night. “My mother never wanted me,” he says, so softly Shiro almost doesn’t hear him. “I was… forced on her.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Shiro says softly, though his mind immediately goes somewhere disturbing, “but even if it is, it’s hardly your fault.”

“She wouldn’t look at me,” Keith says, chewing on his bottom lip.

“Did she abandon you?”

“I think… she died,” Keith says, his eyes narrowing as if he’s trying to piece together memories too old or too painful to think about very often.

“You don’t know?” Shiro asks.

“I know the men were angry about it,” Keith says bitterly.

Shiro startles a bit at that. “Men, what men?” 

“The men in the uniforms,” Keith says, his eyes flickering momentarily to Shiro’s face before he drops his gaze again.

“I don’t…” Shiro breaks off, shaking his head. “Was your mother in the military?”

Keith just stares blankly at him and Shiro sighs. He sits up and Keith reluctantly rocks back onto his heels, hugging himself tightly in the oppressive darkness. He’s shivering, as if he’s dreading what comes next. “No,” Shiro says gently, holding out his hand, “com’ere.” 

Keith looks as if he’s about to cry. He takes Shiro’s hand. Shiro sits with his back propped up against the water eroded limestone wall and Keith leans against his bare chest. Shiro wraps his flesh and blood arm around him and lifts his hand to Keith’s damp head. “It’s okay,” he says softly, gently running his fingers through Keith’s shaggy hair. “You’re safe. What did the uniforms look like?”

Keith exhales a long trembling breath. “Blue suits,” he says, his voice thick and broken, “with badges and long white coats.”

 _Long white coats and badges. Hospital badges maybe?_ “Like doctors?” Shiro asks, “Was your mother ill?”

Keith just shrugs. “They did things to her,” he murmurs quietly, “things that hurt her.”

 _Well that’s doctor’s for you,_ Shiro thinks rather cynically, though he doesn’t say it. His doctors had been especially good at making him feel ten times worse in the short-term for the sake of improving his long-term prognosis. If Shiro had a dollar for every time he woke up sick and in pain after a surgery… he’d have a metric fuck-ton of dollars right now. 

“What about your father?” he asks.

“He let me go,” Keith murmurs. He feels even colder than usual, as if the chill of his bitter memories has somehow leached all the warmth from his body as well. 

Shiro blinks, a vague feeling of uneasiness making his stomach crawl. “Were you being held against your will?”

“Now’s our chance, while the others are distracted,” Keith whispers, ignoring the question. He’s shaking, in the throes of some long repressed memory. Shiro cradles Keith’s dark head against his shoulder, his warm fingers gently caressing his icy cheek. “Go, now,” Keith continues breathlessly, “as far and as fast as you can, and never come back.” 

“Shhh,” Shiro soothes. “You’re all right. You’re with me. Come back now.” Keith’s voice fades to silence and his breathing gradually slows. Shiro presses his cheek to Keith’s and Keith closes his eyes. “Was your father one of the doctors?” Shiro asks him.

Keith swallows. “He wore a uniform,” he says simply. He sounds completely wrung out, his voice broken with exhaustion. 

Shiro doesn’t know what to think. His thoughts turn to Keith’s hairless body and his skin’s imperviousness to sun damage. Perhaps he inherited those traits from his mother and they’d been part of some sort of medical study. That wouldn't explain why they were being held against their will though. Medical experiments? It seems far-fetched, but then so did robotic limb replacement up until twenty years ago. That’s when some sort of scientific breakthrough occurred and suddenly there were tremendous leaps forward in medical progress, not just in cybernetics, but across the entire medical field. Perhaps Keith and his mother had something to do with one of them.

“Keith, the men who hurt your mother,” Shiro says, licking his suddenly dry lips. “Did they ever hurt you?”

Keith just sits there in silence. He turns his head and stares at the gradually calming night outside the crevice. “Do you think the big… the flying thing… the…”

“The plane?” Shiro asks. He guesses they’re done talking about Keith’s past now, or rather, Keith is.

“Yes, the plane,” Keith says with a nod. “Do you think there might be something on it that could help you leave this place?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro says, “I never really thought about it before.” He’s not really sure where Keith is going with this, but that’s nothing new. “I suppose there must be emergency supplies of some sort on board though,” Shiro says thoughtfully scratching his stubble covered cheek, “a life raft maybe.” 

“Life raft,” Keith murmurs.

“An inflatable boat,” Shiro clarifies.

“What’s it mean, inflatable?” Keith asks, turning his head to curiously regard Shiro’s face.

“Uh, I guess it’s a big sorta compressed package that fills up with air and turns into a rubber boat,” Shiro explains, or tries to explain. Sometimes it’s not that easy without some sort of visual aid. In the beginning, he used to draw pictures in the sand, though his art skills are flimsy at best. It’s too dark and stormy for that now though.

Keith’s eyes narrow as he tries to picture what Shiro is describing inside his head. “I think I understand,” he says finally.

“You realize of course that all that stuff is locked inside a cargo hold at the bottom of the ocean right?” Shiro says mildly. “It’s not like we have any hope of actually getting to any of it.”

“Maybe the storm will wash it up,” Keith says absently, and there’s something in his expression that causes Shiro to do a pretty comical double take.

“Maybe,” he says flatly, “but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

Keith doesn’t answer. He picks up Shiro’s discarded shirt from the damp moss covered ground and pulls it on over his head. “We should sleep,” he says. There isn’t much to do on a deserted island once it gets dark except sleep, but Keith’s mood has taken a strange turn and Shiro can’t stop thinking about where their conversation left off before Keith managed to deflect it.

“Keith…”

“I’m tired Shiro,” Keith snaps, cutting him off. He turns his back on Shiro and curls up on the ground, drawing his knees up to his chest. Shiro sighs and scrubs his face and slowly lays down on his side, staring at Keith’s back. He closes his eyes, but opens them again a moment later when Keith suddenly growls in exasperation and abruptly stands up. He stomps over to Shiro and stands over him for a moment, glowering at him in the darkness. Shiro rolls his eyes and lifts his arm. Keith lays down in front of him, curling up against his chest with his forehead resting in the nape of Shiro’s neck. 

Shiro doesn’t push it. He lays there staring into the darkness as Keith’s breathing slowly evens out and his body grows heavy against him. Shiro sighs and runs his fingers through Keith’s damp hair, carefully, so he doesn’t wake him up. For the first time since he was stranded here, Shiro doesn’t want to be rescued, not if it means being without Keith. He thinks he may be falling in love with him.

He doesn’t remember when he finally falls asleep, but when he wakes up the sun is peeking out from behind the edge of the crevice. There’s a small pile of wild mangoes stacked on the ground next to a gallon jug of water.

And Keith is gone…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on the [tumblr](https://radiofreekerberos.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still technically merMay right?

It’s the vibration that wakes him. It thrums through the damp rock walls surrounding him and the moss slick ground beneath him. He lifts his head, cringing suddenly as a loud roaring whine fills the air. It sounds like the sky is falling. The hybrid climbs to his feet, then climbs out through the crevice into the black night. There are no stars. It’s not raining, but there are storm clouds rushing to obscure the moon’s pale face.

The wind picks up and the roaring increases, building to a throbbing crescendo that makes the young hybrid duck involuntarily and cover his sensitive ears with his hands. He looks up in wary fascination as a flying machine suddenly bursts from beneath the cloud cover and traces a wobbling arc across the night sky. Bright orange flames lick at its wings, trailing thick black columns of smoke. 

He’s seen them before, the flying machines, but never here. This place has always been outside their territory. Once a long time ago, he’d stared up at them in fascination from the dangerous waters surrounding the mainland full of people. The people his father had warned him to stay far away from, but years spent in isolation had made him curious. 

It was the first time he’d ever seen so many humans in one place. The way they’d interacted with each other fascinated him. He’d kept his distance of course. He’d assumed all humans were just as unfeeling and severe as his keepers had been, unforgiving and quick to dole out punishment, and yet outside that place, on the beaches and on the water, the people seemed different. They seemed to care for each other, the way the hybrid’s mother once cared for him. 

Something inside him ached with longing at the memory. Despite his father’s warnings, he was desperate for companionship. Perhaps if he learned to copy the human’s forms, they might even accept him as one of their own. He longed to try, to finally belong somewhere, but that was before his first tentative contact with one of them ended in disaster.

The storm breaks with a jagged bolt of lightning that briefly turns the night sky to day and a wall of water erupts from the sky, drenching the hybrid as he watches the struggling flying machine limping towards the horizon. The throbbing abruptly cuts out and it falls out of the sky and plunges towards the black sea, slicing through the cloud cover without a sound, just an eerie whistle of wind. The hybrid flinches when it hits the water with a blunt crack, and promptly disappears beneath the surging waves.

He pushes the dripping hair from his eyes and watches the dark tidal surge sweeping across the beach in the pounding rain for a moment before diving into the water. He’s not even sure why. Experience has taught him the folly of getting too close to the humans and their vessels. The machine was practically touching the horizon when it went down. The crash site must be hundreds of miles away. It isn’t as if he’ll get there in time to help. And yet he can’t just turn his back either. 

He shifts. Gills open along his sides, just above legs that fuse into a thickly coiled tail glowing softly with lavender colored bioluminescence. Then he takes off, slicing through the churning water like a shark. He’s a powerful swimmer, young and strong, but even at top speed it’ll take him some time to reach the crash site. He has to alter his vision a few times along the way, hyper-dilating his eyes to let in as much light as possible, effectively giving himself night-vision in the solid black water. 

It’s something he’s always done without thinking, automatically altering himself in subtle ways that best suit his current environment. Bigger changes take more effort, but even those become second nature after he’s held the form for a while, like water taking on the shape of the container it’s poured into.

There’s never been an environment that he hasn’t been able to adapt to, and his captor’s exposed him to hundreds. An apex predator they called him. He still doesn’t know what that means exactly, but he knows they feared his abilities enough to imprison him for having them. They feared _him_ enough to treat him like a monster while doing it.

He arrives too late to do anything but stare at the broken pieces of flying machine being carried out to sea on the churning waves. Most of them are small, too small to shelter survivors. Perhaps the machine broke apart when it hit the dense ocean, or maybe it was simply swallowed up and is long gone beneath the waves, too fast and too far for anyone to escape, too deep for even the hybrid to reach without significant changes to his form.

He hears something. A low groan in the darkness, lost in the howling wind if not for his sensitive ears. He skims the surface of the water. It’s difficult in the breaking waves. Storms don’t usually bother him. The sea is always calm if you go deep enough. He sees something. A violet glow cutting through the pitch black night like a beacon. It’s erratic though, growing fainter, as if it were steadily moving away from him. The hybrid doesn’t know what to make of it. Could there be someone out here, another hybrid like him.

Cautiously, he approaches the dimming light, swimming just below the surface, untouched by the turbulent waves above. There’s a body in the water. A moving one, the hybrid can feel the vibrations from the human’s racing heart echoing all around him. There’s blood in the water as well, sluggishly leaking from a gash in his scalp. The deep violet glow is coming from the artificial arm attached to his right shoulder. 

The hybrid blinks at it, an odd sense of deja vu gripping him as the light fades and the human’s unconscious body begins to slip beneath the waves. The hybrid darts forward and scoops him out of the water. He lifts the human’s sagging head, carefully cupping his chin to keep his mouth above water. A flash of lightning illuminates his face and the hybrid startles and nearly fumbles his grip. 

It’s... him. It’s the boy he inadvertently led astray all those seasons ago. Only it… It can’t be, can it?

He gently tilts the human’s head towards him. Guilt flaring at the sight of the faded scar painting the bridge of his nose. He’s older of course, but it’s the same boy. The hybrid would recognize his face anywhere, and until this moment, he’d have sworn that he was responsible for his death. He’d known the boy wouldn’t survive for long without immediate attention, and yet he’d abandoned him on that beach exactly like the monster his captors always believed him to be.

The human groans and the hybrid remembers the way he’d screamed when the spinning boat blades cut into his flesh. He never should have approached him, but there was something about the boy that drew the hybrid in. A deep sadness that clung to him as if it were a physical thing bubbling up from inside him and seeping out in the salty tears filling his eyes. Until then, the hybrid had thought humans only capable of cold indifference. He hadn’t expected to find a kindred spirit out among the waves.

The human’s dark gray eyes open for a moment to blindly regard the hybrid’s face, then slide shut again almost immediately. The hybrid swallows. He won’t abandon him again. 

He pulls the human to him. He’s grown considerably larger since their last meeting. The hybrid tightens his grip and finally notices just how far out to sea the relentless current has dragged them. He’ll have to keep to the surface to prevent his charge from drowning. It’ll be a slow and arduous trek back. The hybrid grits his teeth and tightens his grip, ignoring the heavy waves breaking over them as he swims off into the black night.

***

Keith is a coward. He’s selfish and horrible. It’s taken him days of searching the dense ocean waters to find the crash site. Days of slipping away before sunrise and returning after sunset. Days of Shiro worried and wondering where he is and the hurt look in his eyes when Keith can’t offer any answers to his questions. 

Every night they lay in each other’s arms, Shiro calls it “making love,” as if Keith needs an excuse to fall more in love with Shiro than he already has, and they hide things from each other. The questions Shiro no longer asks and the secrets Keith can’t bring himself to reveal. He feels like a fraud, wrapped up in Shiro’s warmth, too afraid to expose himself as the monster he really is.

He can’t stand the thought of being alone again, but he can’t force Shiro to share his life of self-imposed isolation either. Keith loves him too much not to let him go, but it needs to be soon or he won’t be able to do it. He’ll follow Shiro to San Francisco and put both their lives at risk. He won’t be able to help himself. 

So he spends days searching for the downed plane, hoping to find, what was it, a… lifeboat, inside that he can use to release Shiro from his imprisonment. But he only found the plane the first time because the wreckage and the light from Shiro’s arm led him to it. He finds it the second time because of the men. 

Keith floats just below the waves and stares at them in the water. There are dozens of them, clad in oil slick suits with breathing masks on their faces and oxygen tanks on their backs. He makes himself black in the dark water, blending into the basalt shoals. Then he watches as great pieces of twisted wreckage are brought up to the surface on hovering metal platforms and loaded onto a giant vessel crawling with soldiers in blue and white uniforms. 

Black plastic bags cover the deck in neat rows. Keith knows what’s inside them. He watches as more are raised from the depths and carefully stacked with the others. There are so many. So many people returned to their families wrapped in plastic. Shiro’s mother won’t even get that much Keith thinks, as he watches Shiro’s only chance of leaving the island being hauled away in pieces. 

He should’ve known the humans would come to collect the remains of their machine. He never should’ve waited this long to start looking for it.

He cringes when several divers pass by his hiding spot, though the camouflage he’s devised seems to be doing the job. If he shifts to human form and swims out to them, perhaps he won’t be found out right away. He might even be able to convince the soldiers to send a rescue vessel for Shiro before he makes his escape. 

Only he finds himself frozen to the spot, too frightened to move. Men in uniforms hurt him. They locked him away. They took his mother from him. The thought of willingly delivering himself to them is making his head spin and his stomach churn with fear. He can’t make himself do it. Not even for Shiro, though the realization makes him feel like the vilest creature alive. 

He’d scream if he could, but he just slinks away by increments instead. He glides away over the sharp shoals where he knows no human will follow, afraid to turn his back on them until they’ve diminished to ant sized dots in the distance. He stops abruptly and heads for the surface, dropping his still spinning head into his hands. He doesn’t know what to do. 

Alone he could swim the five-hundred or so miles to one of the big islands full of people, but not if he has to stick to the surface with Shiro clinging to his back. It would be too exhausting and there wouldn’t be anywhere to rest in the open water, not to mention no place to keep the supplies Shiro would need to survive the trip, like fresh water and food. It would only take a few days for Keith to make the trip himself, but then what? There’s a reason he’s never done it before, it’s for the humans’ safety as much as his. 

He swallows and submerges, speeding through the dense water like an arrow headed straight back to Shiro. Even though he’s failed him in every way possible. Shiro would despise him if he knew.

***

The sun is sitting high in the sky when Keith climbs out of the water with a tangle of crabs bundled up in the hem of his oversized shirt. Shiro isn’t waiting for him, which is odd, because he likes to keep himself busy during the day, gathering driftwood for the fire or foraging for food. He’s been keeping himself busy for weeks. 

He wove a mat from palm fronds and hung it over the crevice leading into the cave to shield them from the sun during the hottest part of the day. He fashioned spears out of stalks of bamboo so he could catch fish caught in the tide pools. He’s not very good at it, but Keith likes to watch him try. He’s gathered an impressive collection of shells and other washed up baubles from the beach. Gifts for family and friends he calls them, for when they finally make it home, though saying it doesn’t make him smile the way it used to. 

It’s not like there’s anything else to do. The days are long and hot and monotonous. They meld together like sand into glass. The last storm gave way to weeks of cloying humidity and a relentless white sun beating down on their heads. Keith is able to regulate his body temperature, but Shiro isn’t. He retreats to the relative coolness of the cave throughout the day to escape the heat and the constant swarm of insects buzzing around them. Keith changes his scent slightly to put them off him, but Shiro is being eaten alive. 

And there’s nothing Keith can do about any of it.

He notices the firepit has nearly gone out when he deposits the crabs inside. It’s not like Shiro to let it burn so far down, not when he has to expend so much energy to light it again. Keith covers the pit with a layer of palm leaves then heads up to the cave where he expects to find Shiro waiting out the day’s heat. 

He finds him asleep near the pool at the back of the cave. That’s not like him either. 

“Shiro,” Keith says, dropping to his knees beside him. He lays a hand on Shiro’s bare chest and finds him burning with heat. “Shiro?” he says, worrying his bottom lip. He cautiously touches Shiro’s stubble covered cheek. Shiro flinches and barely opens his eyes, as if his eyelids have become too heavy to lift. It takes him longer than it should to focus on Keith’s face.

“You’re here,” he mumbles groggily, barely mustering a wan smile.

Keith swallows and nods. “I brought… food,” he says, anxiously. The scar across Shiro’s nose stands out like a white stripe against the pink flush suffusing his suntanned face. 

Shiro’s eyes slide shut again. “Not really hungry,” he murmurs, licking his slightly swollen lips. His eyes are a little swollen as well. It could be from the fever, or from the multiple bug bites peppering his skin like angry red welts. Some of them are scabbed over from Shiro scratching them until they bled. The subtle wince when he swallows doesn’t escape Keith’s notice either. 

“You’re unwell,” he says. It’s not a question.

“Just a headache,” Shiro murmurs. “I’ll be fine after some sleep.” Keith anxiously presses his lips together and Shiro smiles and lays his burning hand on Keith’s cheek. “Don’t worry,” he says. Keith takes his hand and Shiro sighs, his eyes closing as he drifts off again. 

As if Keith would ever not worry about him. He sits up with Shiro for the rest of the day and all through the following night. Shiro barely wakes and his fever worsens by the hour. Keith tears a strip off the end of his borrowed shirt and mops Shiro’s plastered hair from his brow with cool water from the pool. 

Just before dawn, Shiro wakes drenched in sweat and shivering. He lurches onto his side and vomits in the corner, his entire body shaking with the effort. Keith kneels beside him and rubs his back. “Sorry,” Shiro mutters sheepishly, as if embarrassed to be such a bother. His voice is noticeably weaker and raspier than it was earlier. 

Keith helps him lay back down. Shiro curls up on his side and hugs his stomach as if in severe pain. Some of the vessels in his eyes have burst, turning them bright red, and his face has started to swell. Keith tries to get some water into him. Shiro mumbles something about it hurting too much to swallow and drifts off again.

The day dawns hot and hazy. The air hangs thick with moisture around them. Shiro is sweating so much, Keith begins to fear for his life. Shiro becomes restless. Every time he wakes, Keith tries to get some water into him, though all Shiro can manage are a few painful sips before passing out again. He wakes with a start and throws it all up a few minutes later. 

Keith does what he can to keep him cool. He soaks more strips from his shirt and lays them over Shiro’s clammy forehead and the nape of his neck, then he uses the last one to give him a sponge bath. A thick rash, like scabby rust colored vines has sprung up along his torso and arms and the patch of crisscrossing scars where Shiro’s artificial arm is fused to his flesh is red and swollen and oozing. Shiro cringes and groans in pain when Keith gingerly dabs it with the cloth.

He starts talking nonsense. His breathing turns rapid and shallow, as if he’s fighting against the oppressive air for breath. His eyes are open, but he looks right through Keith without seeing him. Keith doesn’t know what to do. He holds Shiro’s hand as Shiro shivers and has conversations with people who aren’t there, muttering apologies to someone called Matt. He’s sorry he couldn’t love him, but there’s someone else. There’s always been someone else. Someone Shiro’s been looking for his entire life without even knowing it. They only met once on the day his father died. The boy in the water who saved his life.

Keith’s eyes go wide at the muttered confession. Shiro’s voice trails off and Keith’s attention shifts to his own lavender colored hand wrapped up in Shiro’s. Stress and lack of sleep are causing his control to slip. Shiro’s inflamed red eyes stare unblinking at Keith’s face. “You found me,” he murmurs then he groans and clutches his middle. He gags again, but nothing comes up. “Dad,” he whimpers plaintively, then his eyes slide shut and he goes completely limp.

“Shiro!” Keith cries springing forward, inadvertently raking Shiro’s clammy flesh with his brittle claws. He snatches his hands away and leans over Shiro’s face. He’s still breathing, but just barely. “No,” Keith whispers, screwing his eyes shut, “please.” He rocks back on his heels, raking his hands through his hair as he stares at the still waters outside the crevice. “I… I’ll bring back help,” he stammers, “just… don’t,” he swallows past the bitter lump in his throat and brushes Shiro’s sweaty forehead with his lips, “don’t go,” he whispers, “please.”

Keith climbs to his feet and sprints for the crevice, diving through it and shifting before he even hits the water. He feels like he’s been swimming for days, technically he has, searching for the wreck. He hadn’t even realized how exhausted he was until he hit the water and his overworked muscles started seizing up, but he grits his teeth and twists his tail and pushes himself to go faster. He knows where he’s going now. He’s terrified of delivering himself to the soldiers, but he’s more terrified of losing Shiro. He’d resigned himself to never seeing him again when it meant he would get to go home, but not like this.

He can’t be separated from Shiro like this...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on the tumblr


End file.
